Jewel of the Seven Sages: Shichi no Kenja no Ishi
by cali-chan
Summary: after one too many destroyed wedding attempts, akane and ranma decide to elope. their plans are only rushed after they learn of a mysterious stone that might be able to cure jusenkyo curses. but will the benefits outweigh the sacrifices?


**Jewel of the Seven Sages** (Shichi no Kenja no Ishi) 

**author:** carla, aka cali-chan   
**rating:** PG, so far. rating might go up, though, depending on my mood when writing later chapters.   
**genre:** romance, action, humor, just a little drama.   
**pairings:** basically the "nihao, my concubine" pairs. you know who they are.   
**canon:** mostly anime, since i haven't read the manga. though i'll try to add some stuff that happened in the manga that i know about.   
**summary: **after one too many destroyed wedding attempts, akane and ranma decide to elope. their plans are only rushed after they learn of a mysterious stone that might be able to cure jusenkyo curses. so the whole nerima gang embarks on a mission to the mountains, to find it... but will the benefits outweigh the sacrifices they will have to make?

**author's note:** yeah, the first chapter is a little short, but they will get larger as the action starts rolling. most of the characters will appear at least once, though. oh, and if you know me, you might think the narrator and i are kinda similar-- but i swear she's not a self-insertion, much less a mary sue. i just needed an objective outside POV to narrate. she won't be the central part of the story-- she won't even be there most of the time... oops, is that a spoiler? xD BTW, someone look at the title in japanese and tell me if it's wrong, please :)

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**_Chapter 1:_**_ 163rd._

I must tell you that, as you read this, you will probably think it is a great work of fiction (or well, you might think it's not good at all, but allow me a bit of arrogance as I'm the author of this novel). But it's my obligation to explain to you that every word written in the pages of this book is, in all honesty, completely real. Now, you might not believe me, as to your eyes this must be nothing but a grand tale of fantasy and romance like in the old times; I can only say as a defense that, while I was not present for the most part of this epic adventure, I compiled this retelling from sources who indeed were present, and I give you my word that they are to be trusted. It's not my intent to make myself as a grand thinker in coming up with this incredible story; rather, as a journalist, it is my personal mission to bring to light the amazing tales of our own people, so they can be honored as they were, amazing.

You could say it all started when I entered the journalism school at Tokyo University. In the first week of classes, I met a girl by the name of Tendo Akane; she was in my freshman composition class. She was really nice and friendly, so of course we hit it off and became fast friends. Actually, through the years she became my best friend... we were quite close.

I remember clearly the day I went to her house to work on a joint article. I knew a little about her-- I knew that she lived in a dojo, that she lived with her father and her two older sisters because their mother had died when she was very young. I knew that her father didn't work, that her oldest sister was a sweetheart and a great cook, that her other sister was some kind of merchant that single-handedly supported the whole family and a couple of freeloaders. Oh, and did I mention that her father engaged her to his best friend's son when they were babies and now they had to get married against their will? Well, she spoke about that a lot. Apparently the guy was a jerk, he treated her badly and insulted her all the time and made her feel really bad. She really seemed to hate him. The whole situation was just weird, really.

Nothing could've prepared me for how weird everything really was. I still remember how shocked I was that day, when I walked to the door and a panda let me in. A real panda! I still hadn't gotten over it when Akane whizzed by holding a giant mallet over her head, ready to hammer down a redheaded girl that was running away from her, screaming expletives, who turned out to be Akane's fiancee. And that wasn't even half of it.

To make a long story short, Akane was engaged to Saotome Ranma, who, by the way, was also engaged to two other girls including one Chinese Amazon and an Okonomiyaki-Chef-slash-spatula-wielding-martial-artist, and that's not even taking into account the crazy gymnastics psychopath who also loved him and who knows how many other girls out there who thought they had a claim on him. Akane herself had many suitors, including one boy who could get lost in a closet, one who did voodoo and who knows what other type of weird magic and a Shakespeare-spouting idiot who was at the same time in love with Ranma's cursed form.

Cursed form? Oh yeah, that's one of the best parts, the Jusenkyo Curses-- Jusenkyo are these springs in China in which all kinds of stuff tend to drown for some reason, leaving the spring cursed so that anyone who falls inside becomes whatever drowned in there if splashed with cold water. As if Akane's life wasn't weird enough, Ranma had fallen into the Spring of the Drowned Girl, which meant that he was that redheaded girl pretty much half the time. And if their luck wasn't bad enough, most of the martial artists that lived in Nerima and who either loved them or wanted to kill them had fallen into those springs, too.

So between suitors, rivals, martial arts, all kinds of magic and lots and lots of water, Ranma and Akane's life couldn't get more hectic. That is, until you count the kidnapping attempts, the over-one-hundred-years-old perverts, and the fact that Ranma and Akane really loved each other very much even though they fought like cats and dogs but they were so stubborn that neither would admit it and...

Geez, and I thought MY family was weird.

And yes, I still maintain that this is a true story.

When they were seventeen, a new sort of tradition was instated in Nerima. Every once in a while, Ranma and Akane's parents would force them to get married. They would refuse profusely but would somehow end up at the altar, but as you might imagine and I've come to learn, in Nerima chaos is the rule and with all the extraordinary circumstances in that town, the weddings were never carried to completion. I know, for I attended many of them. What can I say? Some families have a big dinner once a month, well-- the Tendos and the Saotomes celebrated a wedding.

But the true beginning of this tale came when we were twenty-three. I had to present a news story/video for one of my graduate classes and had yet to find a great story to focus on. Then Akane mentioned that their parents were, yet again, forcing them to get married that Saturday. I was astounded. How many times had they tried? She explained it was the 163rd time. It was unbelievable-- that had to be around 1.5 wedding attempts per month since they were seventeen! Surely that had to be a record.

I did some research and found that it was, indeed. So there I had my story: Saotome Ranma and Tendo Akane were about to break the world record for failed wedding attempts. Or well, they had already broken it, but since it hadn't been documented yet I couldn't really use that phrase. So I geared up my equipment and set out to document the disaster. Because with those two's luck, it was definitely bound to be one.

Needless to say, the cameras didn't stop the suitors/rivals. The event was as grandiose as it always was. Especially when it started to rain. And I got it all on video! With my luck a story like this would make me qualify for job as a natural disaster reporter in any local station.

The day after, I went to the Tendo Dojo to get an interview with the Bride and Groom; Akane had promised she would talk to me then. She managed to somehow rope Ranma into it, too, but as soon as they sat down in front of me, I noticed there was something wrong there. They wouldn't look at each other and what's worse, they weren't arguing! It was too bizarre for me to comprehend. They did answer my questions, but the answers were clipped and almost felt rehearsed. I asked Akane about it, if something had happened between her and Ranma since the wedding, and just got the usual reaction-- "Wha- Of course not! Why would something have happened between us? Nothing's happened! I wouldn't want anything to do with that jerk anyway, it's not like I WANT this whole marriage thing to be happening..." yadda yadda yadda. You know, the usual "I'm in denial" answer I always got from her when I started asking about her feelings for Ranma. Unfortunately for Akane, she was a really bad liar; everybody could see past that argument by now (except the suitors, of course, but they do say love is blind... in this case probably deaf and stupid, too...). My instincts were telling me something was going on, and a reporter's hunches must never be ignored.

Everyone in Nerima knows who to go to when you need information. It cost me a pretty penny (my pockets are still crying) but I finally got Nabiki to sell me some of her recent video tapes of everyone's favorite couple.

Now it might seem horrible, and it probably is, that I bought tapes of my best friend that she, of course, didn't know existed. I was violating her privacy, I know. But the way I saw it, Akane would never tell me what was bothering her, and I really wanted to help her in some way, so this was my only choice. And besides, I was stopping the tape from ending up in the hands of one of the local perverts, like for example Kuno. But in the end, it all came down to the fact that I couldn't help myself-- stories this good just can't be passed up. This could be my big break. Yes, I'm terrible, I know.

Though let me tell you, I wasn't feeling too terrible when I came to the Saturday night tape.

One scene showed Akane sitting on the porch, looking up at the sky (it made me wonder just where Nabiki had her camera hidden; but that's not the point). She looked so sad; my heart immediately went out to her. She surely couldn't be happy about all that had happened. She sighed, and put her head on her knees.

A couple of minutes later, steps were heard behind her. Ranma came out of the shadows and Akane was surprised when he sat down beside her, making a point not to look at her. He didn't seem surprised to see her there, though, which made me think he had been looking for her in the first place. This was no chance encounter.

"Listen, Akane, I'm-- I'm sorry about all of this," he blurted out in his usual clumsy way. He still wasn't looking at her.

Akane threw him a glance. She was probably thinking that it was strange to hear him apologize like this. Then she shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise; if everyone didn't show up to fight every time, our parents would have us married by now. And we don't want that, right?" Her voice was very quiet, but Nabiki's hidden microphones were good, so I had no problem hearing her.

Ranma winced... she must've hit a nerve there. "But-- I mean-- Geez, I don't want to be forced into marriage but there's gotta be a better way to go about this! It's been going on for like seven years, it's gotta stop."

Akane snorted. "Well, how do you propose we do that?"

"Uh-- well--" Ranma suddenly seemed very interested in an ant that was moving on the wooden floor. That was proof that he was either going to say something completely sweet, or something completely retarded. "I was thinking..." he scratched his head and then brought his hand back down, looking at Akane from the corner of his eye and trying very hard to make it seem like he wasn't looking at her. He took a deep breath, maybe to gather up his courage. "I think we should elope."

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, for both Akane and myself. Next thing I know my jaw had hit the floor and Akane's head snapped up faster than you could say "whiplash." Her eyes were wide like plates. "What?"

Ranma closed his eyes as if expecting the all-mighty mallet to come down on his head any second now. "I said... we should elope."

Akane's surprise turned to anger in two seconds flat. "This isn't funny, Ranma. You don't want to marry me and you've made that obvious by now. Why would you joke about this? I'm not in the mood!"

"I don't want to... be forced... into marriage," he explained, choosing his words carefully. And this was a huge thing when it came to Mr. Ranma "I-suffer-from-foot-in-mouth-disease" Saotome: it meant that he was deadly serious. "But if we eloped, we'd get our parents off our backs, we'd finally end this whole fiancee situation, and..."

"And we can get out of it easily?" Akane raised an eyebrow. She was starting to see his logic, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Ranma didn't want to marry her, after all. "Get a divorce," she concluded, looking directly into his eyes.

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma whispered back to her, looking just as entranced by her face. And it's in moments like this that we all find ourselves thinking just _lean closer... just a little more..._

Akane looked down then. "You may have a point there." And this is the point where every person in the audience groans-- so much for a kiss opportunity. "But I don't know... I guess I wanted my wedding to be something more special."

"Akane, we've tried this one hundred and sixty-three times. Just getting married at all will be special, believe me," Ranma continued defending his idea. "Just... think about it, ok?"

Akane sighed again. She was doing a lot of that. "I guess I will."

Ranma smiled hesitantly at her. He stood up and extended his hand to help her up. She took it. "Say, Ranma, the next time you propose to a girl, it'd be better if you had a ring and dropped to one knee and all," she quipped in a teasing tone.

Ranma snorted. "As if I'm gonna take advice from an uncute tomboy like you! What do you know about romanticism anyway, you only have a love life because a bunch of loons like you and I can't for the life of me figure out why!"

Akane's eyes narrowed and she growled. So much for civil conversation. "Well, you wouldn't know what romanticism is if it came and bit you in the behind! God knows why you're such a playboy, it's not like you're sweet or anything! You're a jerk and still all these girls hang all over you..."

The sound of their voices dissappeared inside as they went back to their rooms. I stopped the tape before I was treated to one hour and forty-five minutes of the Tendo Household porch, for the video was unedited. Nabiki clearly hadn't seen this yet, or she wouldn't have sold it at all.

I was still gaping like a goldfish. Ranma and Akane were going to elope? To any person this probably wasn't anything important, but for those who live in Nerima this was HUGE. It was the story of the century! If I could somehow get these news out in the open, my status as a journalist was sure to skyrocket. The gears in my head started to work as I came up with a plan.

Not only that, but I noticed that Ranma, in response to the divorce, had said "whatever." Not "Yes, we'll get a divorce"-- he'd said "whatever." So he did want to marry Akane! More important than that, he wanted to stay married to Akane! And I wanted my best friend to be happy and loved... Oh my God, I knew I had to do this. I had to push those two to elope-- Ranma was right, it was their best option-- and I'd be getting an exclusive on the side, which was twice as good!

It took me a few days to come up with a suitable plan.


End file.
